Yes, i forget who it was but they had some very weird stuff happening with a coil breaking down

With Steely's can bus getting hit by something then it would be nice if it was something as simple and stupid as Paris Hilton or a coil

Does she use one then :chin:

Ha! Probably sticks it in her ear as the other bits are worn out

Deckchair5 said:

Ha! Probably sticks it in her ear as the other bits are worn out

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paris hilton instead of a coil??? god she's cheap now! not keen , but ah well why not!

as for the car, well got all four coils out, ripped back all the wiring leading to the coils, to, as an earth runs in the same bunch to the ecu, im going to rewrap all the wiring for the coils, just to make sure, (weathers stopped me up to now, ) going to refit the coils and try it, im sure it will be back, then i will alternate the coils with the sagem ones i have,

just to add, as you said decks, ive revved the engine upt to 6k on the drive and it does come up with the same fault, when my dad gets back im going to see if i can get him to rev it and see if i hear any cracks or signs of tracking back,

at the same time as rthe coil change im cleaning most of the connectors up that i can see, and checking all earths, plus any cables that might have worn through and possibly causing a short to the negative,

only other question i have is, if i disconnect the black connector to the throttle body servo, will it have to be proxy aligned to be reconnected??

if i disconnect the black connector to the throttle body servo, will it have to be proxy aligned to be reconnected??
No as long as the power's off you shouldn't have any trouble and you certainly don't want to be disconnecting that with the power ON.

right all thats been done, still no joy, one thing i did notice is it has drained the battery in 2 days sat on the drive?? with no coils connected,

what the hell?? its got a drain somewhere but i dont know where, could the alternator do this??

is there an alternator relay i can disconnect to try and see if it is that? which relay is it??

right, new results!,

replaced two of the champion coils with sagem ones, and it only happened twice!, instead of 10-12 times as usual, i then replaced the other two champion coils witht the two i took off, and same again only twice,

Being honest i really drove the car in a way purposely to make it fault and it was reacting far better,

only question i have now is, these coils are 4 weeks old, and they have only started playing up now?? has anyone esle heard of the insulation breaking down like this??


should i replace the sparks, i took them out to have a look and i was suprised to see that the ceramic insulator had turned a pinky red colour, what would cause this??#


the only thing im not sure about is the drained battery?? has it possibly been cooked??

pinky red colour i think is heat

balls it looks like its related to lead in the fuel and oxidation.

do you use supermarket fuel?

or have you run injector cleaner through it?

Steely said:

went to fiat, £70.50 to put it on examiner, fighting a losing battle, I dont know what to do, im not outlaying anymore money on it,

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what was the outcome

I'd do some basic charging and earth checks
Have a look here as it explains it pretty well

http://www.aa1car.com/library/charging_checks.htm

Careful what you're doing with dangling leads around a running alternator

Then, with engine off for 30mins so the latching circuit is definitely finished, check for current drain by disconnecting the battery earth lead and, with your mulitmeter on milliamps have one lead on the battery earth post and the other on the the earth lead connector you just removed. I'd like to see 50milliamps or less but it'll depend what alarms and other junk you may have still live. Anything close to one amp wouldn't be good

T14086 said:

what was the outcome

Click to expand...

i didnt put it on the examinier i meant sorry!, couldnt part with 70 quid!

right just done the drainage test, its .38 of an amp, with the meter set to 10a fused,


going to test a bit later to see if it drops to 50ma or less

Steely said:

replaced two of the champion coils with sagem ones, and it only happened twice!, instead of 10-12 times as usual, i then replaced the other two champion coils witht the two i took off, and same again only twice,

Being honest i really drove the car in a way purposely to make it fault and it was reacting far better,

only question i have now is, these coils are 4 weeks old, and they have only started playing up now?? has anyone esle heard of the insulation breaking down like this??

Click to expand...

Ben, this is promising but still very confusing.

I'm not sure why you changed the Sagem coils in the first place but would assume one was playing up. I'd fit all 4 old Sagem coils (obviously if you know one is dead then you can't fit that one).

If you're forced to fit a Champion (because one of the Sagems is dead) then go through all 4 you have and check the engine each time.

Good tip for electrical shorts is to run the engine where it's really dark and try to pick out something flashing/flickering.

Right it goes from bad to worse!,

did a fault code scan with no results today, but onething that did catch my eye was, as with most of these fault code readers, the dash flashes loose connection once, with the asr/esp lights lighting up, this is identical to whats happening at 4000-5000rpm,


is this showing a communication loss between the ecu and dash??

what ive done:

all earths check
fan connection check
clocks out and check
all relays and fuses out under bonnet and checked
all coils out and checked
new battery
voltage checked 12.8/14.1
new spark plugs,
crank sensor check
brake switch replaced
d4 and all connectors close, all cleaned up and checked
ecu connectors cleaned,
abs/asr connector block cleaned


im so at the end of my tether at the mo, i'd glady torch the f****king car, 5 nights up to now fault checking and the car is in bits!,

sadly this has really thrown my liking of fiats, all i want to drive it trouble free! is it too much to ask??

since june its had nearly £1500 put into it, how much further do i keep going?? im at a loss as im not in any financial situation to get another car either!


right feel a bit better now thats off my chest

Agreed mate shame shes giving you so much pain!! Ive been without mine for 10 days now, I give up. Is there much else to check now??

Steely said:

Right it goes from bad to worse!,

did a fault code scan with no results today, but onething that did catch my eye was, as with most of these fault code readers, the dash flashes loose connection once, with the asr/esp lights lighting up, this is identical to whats happening at 4000-5000rpm,


is this showing a communication loss between the ecu and dash?

Click to expand...

Hi Steely. I wouldn't read too much into this. My Abarth does exactly the same thing with my U581 code reader and I don't have any issues with my dash or ECU at all.

I'm thinking that this might be more to do with what happens when the code reader tries to talk to the car. I'm thinking that maybe when the coder reader tries to work out what protocol the car uses, it sends a message on a pin on the obd socket that the car doesn't like. This happens on mine when it runs through the protocols before it gets to KWP2000. I'm going to test this by blocking off all the pins apart from 4, 5, 7, 15 and 16 and seeing if this stops the loose connection messages and the abs/asr warning. For info, pin 4 is the chassis ground, 5 is the signal ground, 7 is the K-Line, 15 is the L-Line (possibly not used) and 16 is the battery power.

Hope this helps you some

Yes code reader is most likely a red herring

I'd do some voltage drop checks on your battery charging circuit, you're looking for a poor connection (lost connection). A sudden drop of voltage will fire off your abs warning / speedo drop and a poor connection will give you a poor battery charge and a quick flat battery

WHAT TO DO
There should be hardly any voltage drop between these components. A large drop shows a poor connection

Engine running- load on - so select heated rear screen

Multimeter on volts
Be careful not to get leads tangled around rotating parts!

1 Touch one end on alternator output wire and other on + battery post

2 Touch one end on alternator casing and the other on - battery post

In both cases you're looking for less than say 0.2volts as they should be direct connections with hardly any resistance

will give that a try tomorrow,

the one thing i still dont understand is the battery draining overnight, even from fully charged and new, would a faulty alternator discharge a battery even with the ignition off??

cheers for the help!

If you have a poor connection, i.e resistance in the circuit then the alternator thinks the battery is fully charged when it isn't. You start off already half drained. Might as well as left your lights on for a few hours. It needs to know the true voltage difference between + and - with no resistance